What makes a good subject line?

Are length, brevity and personalization the keys to good subject lines? I have found that it’s not this magic combination, but the constant testing and versioning of your subject lines. Good subject lines are not simply conjured by a copywriter and often can’t be repurposed time and time again. Good subject lines are ones that are in constant state of flux and improvement.

 
The Elements of a good subject line are:
1. Clear
2. Actionable
3. Relevant
4. Short

 
If you can follow these above four items you are on the right path.
Tactics for improving email open rates with subject lines:

 
1. Timing – look at what times your subscriber base not only opens once but when they come back again. These subsequent opens will help you to chart your course.
2. When do they buy/convert or hit a goal page? By tracking web behavior and combining those metrics with email behavior, specifically opens and clicks, you will start to identify patterns which will help determine hot spots to drive the open.
3. Subject line testing. Are you testing dynamic subject lines driven by profile data or by past behavioral data? The secret is not always in using the name but using what’s important to them. What relevant brands or benefits tied to your campaign? Not shoes, but Nike. Not batteries included, but ready to use. Using specific and relevant brands you might sell, and a benefit-focused offer will give relevance and credibility, setting you apart in the inbox.

What you believe should be avoided in subject lines for best results.

 
1. Avoid being “salesy.” Always pushing your sales agenda will reduce the open rate and conversion rate.
2. Avoid ALL CAPS in subject lines. They feel like you are shouting for attention and not being respectful of your subscribers’ time.
3. Don’t be overly creative with your subject lines. Now this might sound odd, but if it is not simple, understood and gives a clear action or value then it will be passed over.

Tips:
Look at the check out line newsstand on your next visit to the grocery store. Notice all of the tabloids that are meant to be quickly scanned, understood and drive you to want to open and buy them to read more. They work.

 
Step 1: Keep it simple and informative
Step 2: Write to audience, not at the audience
Step 3: Keep the customer lifecycle in mind – think long term
Step 4: Personalize messages based on profile or behavioral data
Step 5: Insight a sense of action – Use a verb
Step 6. Test Twice, Send Once!

“And that’s how the proverbial E mail-Cookie Crumbles”

So you just set up a Facebook page for your company, now what? Just because you set it up doesn’t mean that anyone knows (or cares) that you are on Facebook. You need to promote your social media campaigns just as you would promote a new product for sale. Generally when you’re promoting a new product, to get it off to the right foot, you probably give them a bit of extra incentive at first to come and try it out right? Well your social media campaigns should be no different.

Step 1:
The first thing you’ll want to do is post some cool content on your page. If you invite anyone to be a fan of a page that doesn’t have anything posted, you’ll hardly get any fans at all. You need to give the people who visit your page something to look at. Whether that is video content, blog posts, or pictures it doesn’t matter. Make your page look interesting before you tell anyone that you even have a page at all.

Step 2:
The next thing that everyone needs in order to have a successful social media campaign is friends right? Well then your first step is going to have to be to acquire friends. The obvious first step is to ask your friends and family to become a fan of your Facebook Page. You will get a decent amount of people to become a fan of your page just because they know you. It will help to make your account look a bit more established before you announce it to the rest of the online world.

Step 3:
Now that you’ve got your feet wet it’s time to officially announce your new Facebook Page to the rest of the world. Your next step should be to write a blog article telling all of your fans that you have set up a New Facebook Page. This step is more for the search engines than anything else. It will also act as a reference page for the next step in this process.

Step 4:
Gather a list of people to email and announce the launch of your new Social media page. You may already have gathered an email list from your customers. Email them and let them know, but give them some incentive as to why they should become a fan of your new page. Maybe offer a lucrative discount to all the fans of your pages. It works trust me. I’ve seen it done with a lot of success on numerous occasions. Then, add the people who actually opened the email to a separate email list. These will be the people you will continually email about your new facebook or twitter page.

Step 5:
Once the initial momentum has stopped from the first email, create a contest of sorts, and make the prize opportunity something very nice. One of the best things to do is a “Become a fan for free stuff.” For instance, if you want to make it your initial goal to reach 1000 fans on Facebook, give prizes out to your fans for helping you get there. Customized Girl does a great job with this idea in that contest.

Step 6:
Keep things interesting. You want to continue to keep momentum rolling. Try different promos, contest, and just fun ideas with your new fans on these pages. You want to keep giving them a reason to come back to your page and continue to give them reasons to interact with you. That is how you create online social media buzz.

A lot of smaller businesses might find the amount of time and effort needed to be spent with these people creating new ideas, contest, and promotions to keep their fans coming back for more. I promise you, that the lifetime value of these people is going to FAR exceed the amount of money you spend keeping them entertained. Keep it fun, keep it fresh, keep it real.

In the spirit of the July 4th season I thought it would be fun to learn a little bit more from the founding fathers. Yes, I know they didn’t have an internet connection, and the idea of computers probably would’ve forced mass histeria, but they still can teach us a few things. Without further adieu I give to you the 4 things July 4th teaches us about internet marketing.

1. Be adaptive: When the revolutionary war started nothing was going to plan. The Americans had to adapt and change their course of action accordingly. Just like the war was adaptable so too must your marketing campaigns be. Google changes their algorithms all the time, a new social media site pops up every week, etc. If you are not always watching and looking to change and improve your marketing tactics you will lose the internet marketing “war.”
2. Pick and choose your battles:The Americans won the war because they chose which battles to fight. Your campaigns are no different. You aren’t going to be successful everywhere and if you try to be you’ll lose out on some of the more important battles. For instance, if your site is not optimized for the search engines well enough, than your social media campaigns aren’t going to work to their full potential. Prioritize and take care of the more important things before trying to take over the YouTube world.
3. Know when to call it quits: The British surrendered when they saw that they had to cut their losses and head back to England. Take a page out of their handbook, stay on top of your analytics and web metrics. If a strategy that you are trying isn’t working, and it is taking a lot of your time, stop it. At least step away from it for a bit and then if you have some more free time later come back to it and test again.
4. Be creative: The Americans had to get creative to beat the British. When supplies and ammunition ran slow, they melted down metals they found around the house, and used them for ammo. If they could be creative enough to defeat the greatest empire the world had ever seen, you can get creative enough to take on that new idea you’ve been thinking about trying and launch it with some momentum.

I’m a history buff so I just simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try and learn a little something extra from the founding father’s. I hope you find this post fun and entertaining, and hopefully you learned a little something too.

I have had several requests from readers asking me to give them an example of what a link building article might look like for a small business. The SEO term for link building article is called a link bait article. The nice thing about the name is it is pretty self explanitory when you think about it. You are trying to write a link bait article to “bait” others into linking to your site. The example article I am going to show you is going to be about flowers. I have another person with whom I’m currently working that has asked for an example article as well. So I figured I would share it with everyone else as well.

Example:

Top 10 Most Beautiful Autumn Wedding Flower Arrangements

A wedding is the most intimate and personal and beautiful ceremony that a bride and groom will have in their lives. Wedding flowers should reflect that. Autumn is a season of rich and elegant colors and for that reason it is one of the most popular times of the year to get married. Choosing the best wedding flowers you can is a big decision and a tough one. Take a look at the top 10 most beautiful wedding autumn wedding flower arrangements and hopefully you’ll feel a little more inspired.

Hopefully after seeing some of these flower bouquets and arrangements you have a little bit of inspiration as to what you are looking for in your own Autumn wedding bouquet. These are just a few of the samples from a wide variety of choices that you can choose from. Stop into your local flower dealer and ask them to show you a few samples of their own. Determine your style and they will work with you. Remember choosing flowers for your wedding is a big decision so make sure you are getting what you want and go to a place that is willing to work with you to get you the flowers that you have always dreamed of.

END EXAMPLE ARTICLE

This is just one of the many styles of link bait articles that you can use to help attract link. Let’s break this one down: Who am I targeting with this article? How am I targeting them? How can I get them to link to me? These are all questions that you should ask yourself before writing a link bait article. Now I’m going to answer the above questions by breaking down the entire example article.

Who am I targeting?
Well the obvious answer in this one would be Brides who are getting married in the fall. But take a look at the title. I have made this article a Top 10 article. There is an entire subset of people on the internet who are just Top 10, Top 50, Top 100 addicts. They love to see lists like this. By choosing this format I have hit not only my target market but I have also opened up to those Top 10 list lovers as well. That will give me the opportunity to get the article out to more people and attract more links.

How am I targeting them?
As discussed above I am targeting the Top 10 people simply by making an interesting Top 10 list. But I also am targeting a specific type of Bride. A fall bride? Why did I choose to do that? Because fall really IS one of the most popular times of the year to get married and by targeting just this one specific group this time, I could also do a top 10 winter, spring, and summer article as well. But moreover if a bride is searching for wedding flowers and she is getting married in the fall, she probably is going to be searching for autumn or fall wedding flowers. This article title and subject matter will give me a better chance of showing up in the search results for those brides and will increase the click through rate from this group of brides.

How can I get my target audience to link to me?
This is a BIG one. You need to know how you are going to get links from the article or you have just wasted a lot of time. With this specific article I would likely post the article on some bridal forums, email some other bridal blogs, and I would even try to find some of these brides on some other bridal social networks like say The Knot. Link bait marketing is just like normal marketing. You have to advertise the article in places where brides can find it, just like a flower dealer would advertise his services in places that brides can find it.

I hope this has been a lot of help. If there are any questions go ahead and leave them in the comments and I will respond to them as quickly as I can. If you have any ideas for things that you’d like to see me write about just let me know Email Me and I will try and get something up to help you out. Thanks everyone I’ll see you next time.

Recently I was meeting with a potential client and we were discussing a few things. Mainly, he wants to increase his rankings in the local markets for flower sales. I gave him my plan of attack and started to explain link building through blogging and why it is important that we do. I am actually working on a sample blog article for him right now so he may better understand the link building process and why it is what he needs to be doing.

Most small businesses feed off of the local market. Good news! Google now has rearranged it’s search engine algorithms to give local market small businesses a better chance of showing up in the search engine rankings. The number one way to gain higher search engine rankings is through link building. Blogs are probably the best and easiest way to acquire a good amount of links over time. Those links in turn will give you the extra “link boost” that your site needs in order to be in the ever so important top 3 rankings for the local market.

That part he gets, the part where I was starting to lose him was how to maintain a blog and how exactly I was going to use it to get people to link back to his site. I hope to answer that question for all of you by the end of this article. For an example I am going to use Reggie’s Tires a local tire dealer. Okay here I am at Reggie’s Tires on Main Street and I have my website all set up, my blog is all set up, now what do I do? I know that I need to create quality, interesting content, and content that people will find useful in order to receive any links from outside sources. So I come up with my idea for this article and it is going to be called “The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide to Buying New Tires.”

Now, while that might not be the most interesting article in the world to the entire population, it is very interesting to someone who is searching for a new set of tires online. Next you are going to promote that blog article in as many ways as you can possibly think of, email, social media, maybe you’ll even call a few people who you think might be interested in your article. After the people read your article they are either going to read it and find it useful and even possibly link to it, or they won’t. Let’s say you contacted 100 people and you got 10 people to link to your article (a pretty good number of links) Google is going to read those links to that article, and give Reggie’s Tires a boost in the search engines when someone in your area is searching for tires online.

Keys to Link Building Success

1. Create quality and useful content: Keep that content related to your site however. If Reggie’s Tires wrote an article about the “Top 10 deserts EVER” while he might have an opinion on that, a person who is potentially buying tires from Reggie, doesn’t care what his favorite deserts are.
2. Be persistent: In order to dominate your local online markets you need to have more links than the rest of the competition. Don’t expect to get 100 links from one article. Link building takes time, it’s also very time consuming, but just stick with it and I promise you you will see results.
3. Forget your Competitors: A lot of small businesses have the habit of focusing a lot of their efforts worried about what ‘the other guy’ is doing. The internet is the way of the future, if your competitors aren’t blogging yet, they should be, don’t let what they are doing deter you from grabbing the bull by the horns yourself. You’ll be ahead of your local competition if you are the first to act.

I hope that answers a lot of questions any of you might have. If you have more please don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll respond to it as quickly as I can. If you don’t have a blog set up, get to work, you’re going to come out of this economic downturn on top, so work hard and you’ll be FAR ahead of everyone else.